


Little Boxes

by Ellsey



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Cute baby scientists being cute, SHIELD Academy, Slight spoilers for 6x06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 08:57:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19314871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellsey/pseuds/Ellsey
Summary: Jemma Simmons loved to organize things into boxes, but Leo Fitz was proving hard to classify.Very slight spoilers for 6x06





	Little Boxes

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, so having seen 6x06 a couple times now (sorry not sorry), I was interested by Jemma's statement in the Academy flashback that she remembered that night as being the night she put him in the friend zone. This interested me because that usually implies that someone is coming on to you, and it didn't seem like Fitz was really putting the moves on. And then I had this idea.

Jemma Simmons loved to put things in boxes. Good feelings in one, bad feelings in another. Her love of science in one, her love of her parents in another. It was nice and clean. Everything made more sense when it could be compartmentalized. Which was why Leopold Fitz was particularly vexing.

He didn’t seem to fit into any of her boxes. Truthfully when she had first seen him, she had been annoyed. She had come to the SHIELD Academy to be truly exceptional. Her age was a part of that. To see another person her age on day one had truly annoyed her.

Fitz was a bit of a know-it-all it seemed, which Jemma supposed he could pull off since he actually did seem to know it all. Well, at least when he could get in an answer before her. He seemed a bit stuck up as well. Overall, Jemma wasn’t impressed. 

Their professors thought they should work together, so they paired them in the lab. Jemma had determined to be as cordial as possible, but it turned out it wasn’t that difficult. When you got Fitz on a subject he was interested in, he was actually very easy to talk with. He asked her to come by his room that night to help him with a problem, and Jemma wasn’t sure whether he wanted to talk science or if he was weirdly coming on to her. She was intrigued enough to show up.

It turned out that Fitz really did want to discuss science. He really was a genius. The ideas flowed out of him like water. They would probably drown a normal person, but Jemma was anything but normal. She was more than able to keep up with him. Their thoughts seemed to weave in and out of each other, each building off the next. It was something Jemma had never quite experienced. Her ideas seemed to magnify when talking to him. Her thoughts were sharper. She almost felt that they were better together, but that didn’t make sense. She had always been fine on her own. How could you be better with someone you barely knew?

Which brought Jemma to her current dilemma. She had no idea how to classify Leo Fitz. She was currently trying to help him reign in some manic ideas he was having. Did she feel motherly towards him? Maybe, although she had to admit there was nothing maternal about how she had felt when watching him work through a particularly difficult math problem. She felt her herself starting to blush. That had been very...nice. 

She didn’t feel quite like she was interested in him, at least not in any way she had felt before. She had certainly had crushes, and it was nothing like this. It was strange though. The longer she talked with Fitz, the more she thought she didn’t want to stop talking with Fitz. 

Maybe this was...friendship? If she was being honest, she had never really had that many friends. And it had certainly never been like this. They had talked into the wee hours of the morning, never running out of things to say. As they talked longer and longer, Jemma could see Fitz relaxing more. The tension in his shoulders seemed to relax. That made her happier than she would have expected. 

Friends. She liked that idea. Leo Fitz was her friend. That box was the perfect fit for him. Her life once again in order, and Jemma could rest easy knowing that everything had its proper place.


End file.
